Place:Donaueschingen, Baden, Germany

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Donaueschingen is a German town in the Black Forest in the southwest of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg in the Schwarzwald-Baar Kreis. It stands near the confluence of the two sources of the river Danube (in ).

Donaueschingen stands in a basin within low mountainous terrain. It is located about south of Villingen-Schwenningen, west of Tuttlingen, and about north of the Swiss town of Schaffhausen. In 2015 the population was 21,750, making it the second largest town in the district (Kreis) of Schwarzwald-Baar. It is a regional rail hub.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Donaueschingen is first recorded as Esginga in 889; the modern form of the name is first attested in 1292. In 1283, Rudolph von Habsburg granted the principality of Baar and Donaueschingen to Heinrich von Fürstenberg. The right to brew beer was also connected with this grant. This is the source of the Fürstenberg Brewery. In 1488, possession was passed to the Count of Fürstenberg-Baar. From the 18th Century it was the residence of the Princes of Fürstenberg. In 1806, Donaueschingen came under the rule of the Grand Duchy of Baden and was granted township in 1810. A large part of the town was destroyed by fire in 1908. Donaueschingen has a tradition as a military garrison; since World War II the French military has maintained barracks in the town, and, until the early 1990s, the U.S. Air Force operated a contingency hospital there. The hospital never received casualties on a large scale from military operations; it saw the most activity in 1989, when the United States offered the facility as temporary housing for refugees leaving from East Germany to the West.

Though the Princes of Fürstenberg were nominally mediatised and deposed as absolute ruler of the principality, they still own huge property in their former lands, including their palace with the surrounding parks and gardens. The Schlosspark (palace gardens) which used to be public and the only park accessible to the citizens of the town since 1806 recently became off-limits again. The Princes of Fürstenberg were also the owners of an important manuscript of the Nibelungenlied (Manuscript C) until they sold it in 2001. The ancestral brewery has also been sold.

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